American Cassandra - Susan Lindauer’s Story

American Cassandra - Susan Lindauer’s
Story

"From a
marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products
in August” said' Andrew Card, center, former Bush
Chief of Staff, referringto the public relaitons
campaign to attack Iraq. 9/2002 Part 1 of a 2 part seriesBy Michael
Collins“Scoop” Independent NewsWashington,
D.C.

Above all, you must
realize that if you go ahead with this invasion, Osama bin
Laden will triumph, rising from his grave or seclusion. His
network will be swollen with fresh recruits, and other
charismatic individuals will seek to build upon his model,
multiplying those networks. And the United States will have
delivered the death blow to itself. Using your own act of
war, Osama and his cohort will irrevocably divide the hearts
and minds of the Arab Street from moderate governments in
Islamic countries that have been holding back the tide.
Power to the people, what we call “democracy,” will
secure the rise of fundamentalists.

Susan Lindauer sent her
eleventh and last letter on the Iraqi political situation to
then Bush chief of staff Andrew Card on January 6, 2003,
just two months before General Franks gave the command to
invade on March 20, 2003. She’d sent ten other letters on
Iraq to Card, her second cousin, over a two year period.

In her final letter she made a prophetic plea to head off
the war. Through Lindauer’s back channel contacts at the
Iraqi United Nations mission, Lindauer said that she’d
gathered a great deal of information. She had good reasons
to believe that the Iraqis were ready to offer huge
concessions on inspectors and on other United States
demands.

As the opening quotation shows, she correctly
predicted what other knowledgeable observers believed.
While the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan had al Qaeda on its
knees, an Iraqi military defeat would lead to a civil chaos.
This would provide the basis for a resurrection of bin
Laden’s operation and then revive the al Qaeda terrorist
risk to the United States.

Lindauer was arrested on March
17, 2004, fifteen months after the last letter to Andy Card
and two years after the trip to Baghdad referenced in the
indictment. She was charged with “conspiring to act and
acting as an unregistered agent of the government of Iraq”
and “forbidden financial transactions” with Iraq
totaling $10,000 relating to those acts. The charges cover
the period of October, 1999 through February 2004.

She
denies acting as an Iraqi agent and says that she’d been
recruited by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency to open
a back channel for contact with Middle Eastern nations that
lacked formal diplomatic ties the U.S. She asserts that
CIA was overseeing her contacts with Iraq and that the U.S.
government was fully informed of her activities.

She
was very specific when she said that she had no knowledge of
or contact with the two Iraqis named in her indictment. In
his final ruling on the case, Judge Mukasey observed
that:

It bears emphasis here that it was
never the government's theory that Lindauer participated in
such conduct, or indeed that she even knew the Al-Anbuke
brothers. Rather, she and they were charged together only
because both allegedly conspired with IIS. Judge Michael B.
Mukasey, Opinion and Order, September 6,
2006.

At her preliminary hearing, she
was remanded for trial in federal court, Southern District,
New York, and placed on $500,000 bail

Another 18 months
passed without action until the prosecution requested that
Lindauer undergo a psychiatric evaluation. The prosecution
argued that she was unfit to stand trial for two reasons:
she believed that she was not guilty and she was therefore
unable to contribute to her defense since she didn’t
understand that she might be convicted. Her failure to
accept guilt by denying what the prosecution called
delusions somehow proved mental incompetence.

Based on the
psychiatric evaluation, Judge Mukasey ordered Lindauer to
the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, Federal
Medical Center (Carswell FMC), Ft. Worth, located on the
grounds of Carswell Air Force Base. Lindauer reports
considerable distress at confinement and the condition of
her fellow female inmates.

Lindauer has consistently
maintained her innocence throughout this entire affair.
After seven months at FMC Carswell, she had a hearing with
Judge Mukasey in early May 2006. The psychiatrists at the
federal prison facility wanted to force her to take
psychotropic medication, a position strongly supported by
the U.S. Attorney prosecuting the case. She vigorously
objected to this, which was the basis for the May hearing.
The government’s rationale for forced medication and the
treatment at Carswell FMC will be discussed in more depth in
the second part of this series.

Rather than being sent
back to the prison facility, she spent four months at the
Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. Finally, on
Sept. 8, 2006 she was released by order of Judge Mukasey.
He flatly denied the U.S. Attorney’s request for forced
medication, noting contradictory opinions on diagnosis and
poor support for the efficacy of the medication recommended
by court appointed and prosecution experts.

His opinion
and order implied that there was not much of case against
her: “There is no indication that Lindauer ever came
close to influencing anyone, or could have.” Opinion and
Order, Judge Michael B. Mukasey, Sept. 6, 2006

The Judge
ordered that Lindauer be released from jail. She remains
free to this day. Through former U.S. Attorney Brian
Schaunnessy of Washington, D.C., she is seeking a trial on
the charges levied and sees that as a public forum to verify
her story and clear her name.

Susan Lindauer’s
StoryAfter seeing an article I wrote on
Attorney General nominee Mukasey, Susan Lindauer emailed Jeff
Tiedrich, publisher of the political
web site that carried the story. She complimented my
analysis of Mukasey, which had mentioned her case. I
received the email, contacted her, and requested an
interview. She agreed.

Susan Lindauer and I met on two
occasions for a total of about six hours. In addition,
there was an additional two hours of phone contact to assure
that I accurately represented her story. She says this is
the first time anyone contacted her for an in depth
interview on her story and experience.

She was engaging,
articulate, and energetic during the interviews and follow
up calls. In this article, I present her story as she told
it to me. In part two of the series, I cover her
confinement at FMC Carswell, examine how the initial round
of her case was handled, including Judge Mukasey’s
dismissive remarks about the merits of the case against her.
I will also present information from individuals who support
her character and knowledge of Lockerbie and Iraq and offer
some speculation on motives and handling of her
arrest.

What follows is neither a brief in favor of her
case, nor is it a fishing expedition to generate cheap shots
regarding her claims. It’s simply her story.

Susan
Lindauer seeks a trial on the charges to prove her
innocence.

She says that:

She worked for
United States intelligence to create back channel
communication with key Middle Eastern states and all of her
actions were under the supervision of U.S.
intelligence.

She was recruited by U.S.
intelligence to perform this function in 1994 due to her
anti sanctions position and the belief that the targeted
states would find someone with her position and contacts
appealing.

She made significant contributions
through her U.N. diplomatic contacts with Libya for the hand
over of accused Lockerbie bombers to Scottish authorities.
After Lockerbie, she worked as a back channel to Iraq on
resuming weapons inspection.

She is innocent of
all charges filed.

Lindauer reports that her
role as a back channel operative for the U.S. resulted from
a 1994 meeting with Dr. Richard Fuisz in Chantilly,
Virginia. He approached Lindauer who was then on the staff
of Representative Ron Wyden (D-OR), now a U.S. Senator.
She says that Fuisz, reportedly a CIA operative, wanted to
get out information on terrorist threats from Syria and its
proxies who he said were responsible for the Lockerbie
bombing. Fuisz claimed that he could identify the specific
culprits behind the Lockerbie – Pan Am 103 bombing.

She noted that her knowledge of Arab culture and her
positions as an anti sanction, pro peace advocate positioned
her for service as a conduit to nations hostile to United
States. This put her in a position, “to open a back
channel to receive terrorism information from those nations
under sanctions.”

Lockerbie, Scotland and the Bombing of
Pan Am 103The Clinton administration was
interested in using her as an entrée to communicate with
Libya officials, according to Lindauer. Her specific task
was to help obtain the hand over of two suspects in the Lockerbie
bombing to stand trial for the destruction of the Pan Am
flight and deaths of 259 passengers and 11 Lockerbie
citizens

Lindauer described playing an instrumental role
in negotiating the handover of the two suspected bombers
from Libya through her Libyan contacts at the U.N. mission.
She performed the liaison role through the Libyan mission at
the U.N. As a result of her work and other efforts, she
reports that Libya turned over two male suspects, al-Megrahi
and Fhimah, to Scottish authorities. They were indicted and
tried for the bombing and 270 deaths. Scottish prosecutors
convicted Al Megrahi but not Fhimah.

During the lead up to
the trial, Lindauer had serious questions about the guilt of
the Libyans that she helped secure for trial. She says,
“Other Arab contacts told me that Mohammed
Abu Talb, Abu Nidal, in addition to Ahmed
Jibril were the key to this awful crime.”

In 1998,
she provided U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan with a deposition containing information that
she obtained from Dr. Richard Fuisz. This was prior to
Annan’s visit to Libya which Lindauer says was for a
meeting to discuss the Lockerbie trial with Gadaffi. In the
deposition, she offered this: “(Fuisz) says freely that
he knows first hand that Libya was not involved in any
capacity whatsoever. It's my understanding that he can
provide further details regarding his part in the
investigation, or details identifying the true criminals in
this case.”

However, Fuisz was the subject of a
1990’s gag order and required specific permission from the
U.S. in order to give a sealed deposition for the Lockerbie
trial.

Lindauer’s statement on Lockerbie caught the
attention of the Scotland’s Sunday
Herald:

[In 1994] One month before a
court order was served on him (Fuisz) by the US government
gagging him from speaking on the grounds of national
security, he spoke to US congressional aide Susan Lindauer,
telling her he knew the identities of the Lockerbie bombers
and claiming they were not Libyan. Sunday
Herald May 28, 2000

The Herald
discussed her role in negotiations with
Libya:

Congressional aide Lindauer, who
was involved in early negotiations over the Lockerbie trial,
claims Fuisz made "unequivocal statements to me that he has
first-hand knowledge about the Lockerbie case". In her
affidavit, she goes on: "Dr Fuisz has told me that he can
identify who orchestrated and executed the bombing. Dr Fuisz
has said that he can confirm absolutely that no Libyan
national was involved in planning or executing the bombing
of Pan Am 103, either in any technical or advisory capacity
whatsoever.” Sunday Herald May 28,
2000

Her position was not that
different than an analysis offered in Time
Magazine in 2002. Both she and Time speculate that
Ahmed Jibril, a Palestinian resistance leader allied with
Syria, was responsible for the bombing. Time magazine even
suggested that the terrorist act was a “hit” on a
special U.S. military group seeking to free American
hostages held in Lebanon.

Just recently, Time
ran another article on findings by investigators raising
factual questions that cast doubt on the guilty verdict of
the one suspect actually convicted in the case.

On June
28, 2007, Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC)
made a referral of the al Megrahi conviction for further
review due to a critical flaw in the case. Evidence from a
Maltese shopkeeper that helped convict al Megrahi was
accepted by trial judges without a “reasonable basis”.
The SCCRC is empowered to refer flawed decisions to
Scotland’s Supreme Court, which must hear the case.

Just
recently, October 2, 2007, The
Scotsman reported that “Fresh doubt has been cast over
the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber after it emerged a
document containing vital evidence about the bomb timer has
never been shown to the defense.”

In addition, The
Scotsman, Oct. 6, 2007, reported that two key witnesses,
the Maltese shopkeeper and the head of the company that
manufactured the timing devise for the bomb, were offered $2
million and $4 million respectively by U.S. officials to
tilt their testimony for a conviction of al
Megrahi.

Lindauer said that her work on Lockerbie started
in 1995, “I was being used aggressively at this point for
positive things.” She didn’t see any inconsistency
between her activism and her work with the intelligence
community. She opposed both sanctions by the United States
and violence by terrorist states.

Thus, by her logic,
her work for U.S. intelligence was no different than her
activism – the goals were the same. She said, “From the
perspective of my life, I was able to work against
sanctions” and also work against terrorism emanating from
rogue states. Noting the global reach of the events and the
stakes, she now says, “This work makes you know how small
you are.”

An Opening to Iraq

After Lockerbie,
Lindauer says her work focused exclusively on Iraq, although
she’d started contact with Iraqi diplomats at the U.N. in
August, 1996. She followed her previous approach and
sought out diplomats at the Iraq mission to the U.N. Her
assignment was to help gain a resumption of weapons
inspections based on the rigorous standards outlined by the
U.S. She also made a trip to Iraq one year before the U.S.
invasion.

During 2000, Lindauer began her efforts to
cultivate Iraqi contacts for better relations with the U.S.
She described an extraordinary opportunity that might have
changed the entire direction of U.S. - Iraq relations. As
the secular dictator of an Arab state, Hussein was not fond
of Islamic terrorists. Lindauer reported to her U.S.
contacts that the Iraq government would welcome an F.B.I.
taskforce into Baghdad. She reported further, that “The
F.B.I. would be able to interview witnesses and make
arrests.” Further, she says that:

Iraq
also offered banking records and proof of financial
transfers that would prove Middle Eastern involvement in the
Oklahoma City bombing and the first attack on the World
Trade Center in 1993.

The program met
with a frosty reception from the newly installed Bush
administration. Lindauer said, “I was told that the new
administration was evaluating its position on Iraq, in light
of collapsing international support for sanctions.” There
was no action on the plan. In fact, based on what we know
now, improved relations with Iraq were not on the agenda from the
beginning of the Bush-Cheney era.

This leads to the
second phase of her activities regarding Iraq, the events
that ended with Lindauer’s arrest, indictment, and
incarceration at FMC Carswell, Ft. Worth,
Texas.Cassandra

A year before the
invasion, in March 2002, Lindauer took a trip to Iraq to
meet with government officials. She smiled broadly as she
affirmed the value of that mission: “It would be
regrettable if the US government lied about its knowledge of
this trip.” She paused and smiled again, “We can prove
their total awareness.”

Lindauer sent 11 letters to
Card staring in 2001 leading her to pose this question:
“If he wanted to discourage me to stop talking to the
Iraqis, all he had to do was say so.”

In the final
letter sent to Card, Lindauer delivered her accurate
prediction of the results of the invasion she worked to
avoid – a disaster in Iraq fueling resistance groups
hostile to the U.S. along with a revival of al Qaeda.

She accurately estimated the true value of the exile
groups cultivated by the Bush administration and, in the
case of Ahmed Chalabi, used almost exclusively by New York
Times writer Judith Miller as the basis for her
discredited claims in New York Times that Iraq had weapons
of mass destruction.

Once U.S. bombing
starts, the Iraqi exiles will have no credibility as
leaders. None whatsoever. They will be hated as pawns of
the United States, and my God, let me tell you Arabs can
hate. A U.S. victory will never be sweet for long.
Lindauer letter to Card, January 6, 2003*

She argued
passionately, with dramatic emphasis, that there was a deep
well of hostility towards the U.S. as a result of deaths
caused by U.S. supported U.N. sanctions from 1990 through
March 22, 2003. This is a story not well covered in the
U.S. press but one with palpable results for the people of
Iraq.

That hatred has kindled deeply
because of the sanctions, Andy. Sanctions have killed 1.7
million human beings, including almost one million little
children. Stop and think. What would an American father do
to the man who killed three of his children, once that
father could finally lay hands on the aggressor? Would he
throw candy in the streets? No, he’d beat him to death
and stab him 100 times until his arms were sore. And then
he’d look for the next man, stalking until the right
moment. In Baghdad, I met a man who lost 8 members of his
immediate family in one year. That’s right, eight dead in
ONE year. Multiply that by 20 million people.”
Lindauer letter to Card, January 6, 2003*

While the Department of
Justice questions Lindauer’s role as a cooperator with
U.S. Intelligence and a question was raised about her
ability to “influence anybody,” there can be little
doubt about her analysis and predictions concerning post-war
Iraq. Just in this final letter, she nailed down the myth
of the
exiles and their role in building a new Iraq, the extreme
hostility of Iraqis toward the U.S.
presence and personnel, and the resurrection of al Qaeda and other
terrorist groups.

Whatever her sources and inspiration,
Susan Lindauer is truly an American
Cassandra.

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